Environmental Impact Assessment

The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of individual projects has been part of Scots Law since 1988, when EC Directive 85/337/EEC came into force in the UK. European Union exit has not affected this process.

EIA may be needed for different types of developments including:

Projects requiring planning permission
Energy generation and transmission projects
Motorways and trunk roads
Agriculture and forestry
Marine projects
Oil and gas projects

Roles and responsibilities

The decision about whether Environmental Impact Assessment is needed is made by the relevant decision-maker. Consultation arrangements vary in the different sets of EIA Regulations which exist in Scotland but commonly, the decision-maker must consult us at different stages of the process, including:

When a developer has formally asked them for a Scoping Opinion.
When an EIA Report has been submitted with an application for consent.

The applicant or project proposer:

carries out the Environmental Impact Assessment. This covers all stages of the project including early site investigations, construction, operation and decommissioning.
Submits a report of the assessment with their application for consent.

Historic Environment Scotland is consulted on all qualifying Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) projects in Scotland.

We provide information and advice on impacts on:

scheduled monuments and their setting
category A listed buildings and their setting
Inventory gardens and designed landscapes
Inventory battlefields
Cultural World Heritage Sites
Historic Marine Protected Areas

Find out more about these Protected Historic Places

Pre-application consultation for EIA

We welcome engagement with applicants before they submit proposals. Early engagement lets us clarify the information we believe is essential to a planning application and helps to identify a common understanding of key issues for the historic environment.

Pre-application engagement is an integral part of the planning process as highlighted in the joint Key Agency Statement on Pre-Application Engagement (published 2012, updated 2018). The advice given here is in line with the Guidelines on Streamlining Environmental Impact Assessment issued by Scottish Renewables in 2025.

Before submitting a pre-application consultation

To provide the most useful guidance possible at an early stage, a pre-application consultation request must include the following information:

A description of the proposed development
Proposed site layout
A bare earth Zone of Theoretical Visibility (ZTV) map
Proposed visualisations/viewpoints and/or initial wirelines
Photography
Initial cultural heritage assessment
Any other information or representations that the applicant considers to be relevant
Any specific queries about the proposed development

If any of the above cannot be supplied, the reasons for this should be explained as part of the consultation. We may decline to provide comments until the necessary information is provided.

Further information

Please send all required documents together in an accessible format (i.e. Word or PDF).

If submitting visualisations, these should include the following:

Location of viewpoint (grid reference)
Name of the heritage asset
Any relevant reference number/ID for the visualisations
Where possible, the location of relevant heritage assets and/or geographic features within the viewshed
Turbine numbers (if applicable) or other identifying markers for the proposed development
ZTVs should also be provided in a usable format. If a digital version is being supplied, it must be in a complete form and accompanying digital information for the development such as site layout and locations of visualisations should also be provided (if relevant to the enquiry).

Gazetteers of heritage assets with setting descriptions, if provided, should be thorough and include descriptions of the setting of the asset(s) and how the development would affect them.

How to submit a pre-application consultation

You can contact us by email at hmconsultations@hes.scot to discuss a development proposal.

Our response time is 21 days. If the information provided is insufficient to provide advice, this response could be extended.

We generally will not provide comments on feasibility studies, as we require proposals to be at a suitably advanced stage to identify potential impacts and give useful advice. However, if the consultation meets the requirements outlined above, we will treat it as a pre-application consultation.

Guidance

Our Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) handbook offers practical guidance and information to authorities, consultation bodies and others involved in the EIA process: